Propel Your Stories - and More - to the Next Level With Content Curation Melony Shemberger, Ed.D. Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication Murray State University CASE III Regional Conference Feb. 16, 2015 Nashville, Tennessee

Agenda Background Objectives of content curation What is content curation? What content curation is not Tools and Methods Examples 5-Tip Plan

Objectives of Content Curation Build relationships with and engage your audience. Increase brand visibility. Boost SEO.

Content Curation Share visual elements and social media posts. Aggregate these visual elements with other information so that they tell a story. Visual storytelling is the aim to build value and relationships.

Backed by Research The Social Science Research Network and the AYTM Market Research: 65 percent of people are visual learners and enjoy interacting with visual content online. Content Marketing 2014 trends report: 93 percent of B2B marketers use content curation.

What Content Curation Isn’t Not about collecting or creating a bunch of images. Rather, arranging images into a context. Content curation and content marketing are not the same. Content curation isn’t creating new content; it’s the act of discovering, compiling, and sharing existing content with your online followers. The task? Weave related imagery together with text and other content to tell a story and foster engagement online. Building lasting relationships with loyal fans.

Content Curation Focus: Visuals > Text. People generally respond more to visual stimuli, storytelling than any print or online story. An effective approach to organizing and sharing photos and videos as part of a story. Give audiences concise information, with visually appealing elements, that has been researched and organized.

Content Curation Tools Content curation tools appear in a variety of forms and many exist on the market. Employ a mix of these tools for multiple platforms. Key: Find one or more that would work best for the needs of the communicator, audience and organization. Storify is one example of a content curation tool that appeals to visual storytelling.

Content Curation Methods Should align with your communication strategy. Three content curation methods: – Weekly curated blog posts – Weekly editorial newsletters – Curated content on social networks

Method 1 Weekly curated blog posts: Collect helpful resources found from around the Web, categorize them and publish them as resources for your audience. “One-stop shop” for content, because they remove the need for your readers to do any extensive searching or browsing themselves.

Method 2 Weekly editorial newsletters Save your followers the time it takes to search and scour the Web for great content. Pick out the gems, organize them in a sensible way and send them along to your list. Accompany s promoting your own content as well.

Method 3 Curated content on social networks Social media is one of the channels where content curation is key to staying relevant to your followers and growing your following.

Storify Best of online – tweets, photos, links and posts – compiled about a particular subject and curated into a digest, or a social story. User creates or offers people original visual content to curate, or look through storyboards and curate content from others.

Storify Storify enables the PR professional to search social media networks and the Web to find the latest about a topic. Selected social elements can be dragged and dropped into the Storify story, and then the writer can connect the social elements with copy. With an embed code, the editor then can post it on the Web. Social media users can like and comment on Storify stories, fostering interaction with the editor, writer or client.

Other Content Curation Tools Paper.li – virtual newspaper Curation Soft – searches for you and publishes to your blog/CMS Flash Issue – newsletter format Scoop.it – Pinterest-like format Many others exist. Research what would work for you.

Storytelling Examples Publicize product launches as a way to create fanfare Spotlight individual employees and successes Pitch stories to media outlets by embedding the code in an or social media message.

5-Tip Plan: No. 1 Include a variety of media. This includes posts from as many social media as possible and Web links.

5-Tip Plan: No. 2 Review sources of content. The social media users’ comments, posts and hashtags should be in context with the material you curated.

5-Tip Plan: No. 3 Use as many photos as possible. Storify is a visual tool, and users will gravitate to content with photos and images. A photo should be used at the beginning of the Storify post to serve as a cover photo.

5-Tip Plan: No. 4 Use the best tweets and posts. This ensures that the conversation retains a logical flow.

5-Tip Plan: No. 5 Add commentary to guide the story. The Storify post should have a balance of pulled media and commentary.

Brainstorm Identify three story ideas where content curation would add punch. For each, what online material would you use? Would you use one method (e.g., social media) or combine with other methods?

Questions? Telephone: